Studio Secret -find out what I do with leftover paint

Leaving big globs of OIL paint on the palette is fine - you can come back later and it is still usable...

Which is one of the many reasons I LOVE oils but sometimes I do use acrylics for their speedy dry time and all that leftover paint on the palette cannot be saved... Who can live with all that waste?

Not this granddaughter of a depression era woman who made her own clothes and curtains, canned her own home grown fruits and veg. and saved all her rubber bands in a jar on the window sill. Wasting perfectly good paint would have annoyed her and it annoys me too.

THOU SHALL NOT WASTE PAINT.

So I started taking the old paint and brushing and smearing it onto extra panels that were just lying about. Not paying any attention to what it looked like - just building layers.

After a while, actual paintings started to emerge and now its just part of my studio process.

close ups below

After a while these panels were starting to look like actual contemporary art and I like them.